Leaves Of Turf: The Mad Hatter

Leaves of Turf is a game-by-game, season-long series of football verse by TWER poet lAUreate Amorak Huey. His first poem can be found here, his second here, his third here, his fourth here, his fifth here, his sixth here, and his seventh here. This week, he turns to Lewis Carroll for inspiration for obvious reasons. Playing a game against LSU can certainly feel like going through a looking glass.

The Mad Hatter

Game 8 vs. LSU, October 23, 2010

Gamble, gamble, Tigers coach!
How I wonder about your approach.
Up in the top 10 your team flies,
Undefeated and I don’t know why.

Clock management is not your strength,
And experts have talked at length
About the oddness of your playcalling.
Yet in the end your foes keep falling.

As an Auburn fan, I wish
I wasn’t worried, not even a bit.
But our Tigers have seen firsthand
The crazy things your teams withstand.

In 2007 you ran one more play
When just a kick would win the day.
At first we jeered, but then that pass
Came down to Byrd – alas!

In 2008 it was Lee-to-Laffell
That left us feeling simply awful.
2009? Fine, that one was a rout,
An ugly loss from the inside out.

What bizarreness lies in wait
For this year’s tilt, down on the Plains?
Whose fourth-quarter fortune
Will finally be outdone?

Your quarterbacks aren’t that scary
Until you consider this battered secondary,
Which has gone from bad to hurt –
With disaster Auburn continues to flirt.

Amorak Huey didn’t go to Auburn, but he did have a fake Auburn ID so he could sit in the Jordan-Hare student section throughout his college years. A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, Amorak spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter and editor at papers in Florida, Kentucky and Michigan. Two years ago, he left his job as assistant sports editor at The Grand Rapids Press to take a position teaching writing at Grand Valley State University. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Western Michigan University, and his poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals. He lives in East Grand Rapids, Mich., with his wife and two children. You can find him online at www.amorakhuey.net.

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